In the 21st century, we have already passed a major tipping point – computing is now ubiquitous. Particularly with the advent of smart home technology and smart devices, innovation has kicked into hyper drive right in our living rooms. As technology integrates into more aspects of our daily lives, our interactions with it must become streamlined and intuitive to maintain our health and social relationships.
The graphical user interfaces (GUIs) favored by smart phones, tablets and laptops come with major limitations. They do not fully take humans into account, demanding massive amounts of attention. Using a traditional GUI falls short in many ways including:
Browsing through dozens of applications to turn on a light is counterintuitive. Technology should make things quicker and simpler, however when it complicates traditionally simple tasks it’s an indicator of ineffective interaction design. As smart devices proliferate, it will become important to create quicker, easier ways to interact and communicate with our connected devices.
As humans we live in 3 dimensions – as do our objects. However most models for interaction with technology are still in 2D, making it feel unnatural and requiring us to adapt. In order for technology to truly enhance human life, we need dynamic, three-dimensional interfaces that reflect the way we experience the physical world.
The average person spends more than 8 hours a day looking at a screen. Inevidably, this amount of exposure has a massive impact on our well-being, from our creativity to mental and physical health. In the age of ubiquitous computing, our time spent with technology will only increase – however with better interface design and seamless integration- its negative impact on our health doesn’t have to.
Over the last 50 years, we’ve only seen two major shifts in Human Computer Interaction; the introduction of the personal computer in the mid-80 and mass adoption of the smartphone in the 2000s.
We are about to see another major shift due to the drop in a number of technological barriers like the cost for hardware, standardizations in wireless communication and integrations and manufacturing costs. The result of these trends – paired with unsatisfying existing solutions – will give way to wider implementation of natural and tangible user interfaces.
Generic devices like the smartphone will be replaced by embedded and highly specialized interfaces. Technologies like speech recognition, gesture recognition and haptic input will crystallize into a new generation of Natural User Interfaces (NUIs).